Review: HTC Titan Windows Phone with Mango

The Titan ships with the newest version of the Windows Phone browser, which Microsoft is called Internet Explorer 9. It supports the must-have features, such as pinch-to-zoom, and full HTML as well as mobile web sites. Double-tapping zooms in and out quickly. Web pages for the most part loaded quickly over AT&T's 3G network. It's easy to open new windows/tabs, add favorites, search for items on the page and so on.

Microsoft has been boasting about IE9's speed for nine months now, and there's no doubt the browser is fast. I found it to be lacking in HTML5 powers, though. For example, many of the rich web apps that Google has created for Android and iOS devices are simply unavailable or don't work in IE9. Either Google hasn't created Windows Phone versions of these apps, or it isn't recognizing IE9's true capabilities. Either way HTML5 content is missing in action.

Click a thumbnail above for a larger view.

Customize

Windows Phone 7 Mango offers a typical set of features that can be customized. The tiles can be recolored, rearranged, deleted, and otherwise organized how the user might prefer. The main menu is stuck in the list view, however. Being able to pin apps, shortcuts, web pages, etc., to the home screen as Live Tiles is a nice touch and makes up for the lack of true widgets (a little bit).

Each of the applications has its own little list of settings that can be adjusted to control behavior. Users can also adjust the background color (white or black) as well as the color of the majority of the tiles.

Beyond these simple controls, however, the WP7 Mango is nearly as locked down as the iPhone is when it comes to the ability to change the appearance and behavior of the device. Android devices have way more flexibility.